The Blog

Top judge flags concerns that terror laws go too far

One of the state’s top judges has warned that federal counter-terrorism laws may go too far and the implications will not be known for many years.

Margaret Beazley, the president of the Court of Appeal, said in a speech on Thursday night that the Abbott government’s Foreign Fighters Bill was an example of legislation that might extend “far beyond” the original problem.

Justice Beazley said she had observed in a speech over a decade ago that “the most cursory review of history reveals that difficult social and political times are productive of difficult legal times”.

“Although the seeds are sown in the period of turmoil, the legal implications are often not worked out until many years later, and often those legal implications are extended far beyond the scope of the original problem,” she said at the time.

Justice Beazley told the NSW Law Society on Thursday that “with the GFC and the introduction to national security legislation”, including the Foreign Fighters Bill, “these words are very much applicable to today”.

The Foreign Fighters Bill makes it a criminal offence for people to travel to terrorism “hot spots” as designated by the government.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott confirmed this week that the government had accepted all 36 recommended changes made by the joint standing committee on intelligence and security, which examined the bill.

The changes include greater oversight of the Foreign Minister’s ability to declare a terrorist hot spot a no-go zone and that the laws should have a sunset clause two years after the next election.

Mr Abbott said on Wednesday that he expected the laws to be passed by the end of next week.

The state government was also the target of criticism on Thursday. The NSW Law Society was “extremely disappointed” the government had introduced mandatory minimum eight-year prison terms for people convicted of fatal alcohol-fuelled assaults, president Ros Everett said.

It also condemned the government’s tightening of bail laws – with a review commissioned just four weeks after a new bail regime had started in NSW – as “another knee-jerk approach”.